How to introduce Yourself on Zoom

Practice Your Professional Introduction

You've found a quiet, professional place from which to conduct calls, configured proper lighting, cleaned up your background, and figured out what you're going to wear. Next let's try to knock off another quick win: your audience introduction. How do you plan on introducing yourself? It is critically important for the call to start off on a positive note, and the easiest way to do that is by confidently, politely, and energetically introducing yourself without tripping over your words or looking away from the camera. Further, because success begets success, confidence in this early stage will only serve to reinforce your confidence as you move onto other parts of the call.

To practice it's important for you to be seated (or standing) at the very location where you'll be conducting the calls, staring at the camera, and speaking out loud. Do not rehearse silently or at a whisper! Further, you should try to mirror the general length of the other attendees' introductions, and so try practicing a few variations. Here are a few examples of varying length:

• Hi, it's nice to meet you. I'm Jason, and I serve as the DreamFactory CTO.
• Hi, it's nice to meet you. I'm Jason Gilmore, and I serve as the DreamFactory CTO. I've spent most of my career building software and leading technical teams within a variety of industries including telecom, publishing, education, and agriculture.
• Hi, it's nice to meet you. I'm Jason Gilmore, and I serve as the DreamFactory CTO. I've spent most of my career building software and leading technical teams within a variety of industries including telecom, publishing, education, and agriculture. I'm the author of nine books on web development, and love building software and working with APIs.

Practice a few variations until you have it down cold. Rehearse in front of the mirror. Ask your significant other, brother, sister, mom, dad, friend, and anyone else who will listen to stand in front of you while you perform the introduction. Yes I said perform! Also be sure to practice from the same location where you plan on conducting the calls; there is a psychological phenomenon called context-dependent memory which indicates that information is more easily recalled if the individual is situated in the same location where the memory or experience was first made.